 Welcome to the Endless Knot! What connects witchcraft, dreams, paperclips and trees? The answer is magical, as we'll find out in this year's Halloween video. The word magic had a long way to travel before making it into English. The earliest citations for the word in the Oxford English Dictionary are in the Middle English of Geoffrey Chaucer. The word was borrowed through French and Latin, ultimately from Greek, where it got its adjective form magikos. But the root of this word wasn't originally Greek. The Greek noun magos comes from an old Iranian word magush, probably through Old Persian from Old Median. The Greek noun magos makes it into English too, as the word mage, and in the plural form magi, which is probably mainly known from the three magi visiting the baby Jesus in the Nativity story. Ultimately, the word can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European mag, to be able half-power, the source of a number of other English words, such as the auxiliary verb may, might, both the verb and the noun, and machine, so basically words about ability or power. Now the shift in meaning of this word is the important thing here. The Old Iranian word magush referred to a priest or perhaps originally a priestly caste. This was the original sense in Greek too, referring specifically to the Zoroastrian priests of the Persians, but it gradually came to have the connotation of magician rather than priest, and it's in that sense that we have the English word magic. Well, one religion's holy priest is another religion's dangerous magician, and this distinction was applied within religions too, with for instance early mainstream Christians denouncing the Gnostics as adherents of magic, and later the Protestants referring dismissively to Catholic magic. In fact, the definition of magic is pretty tricky even today, and so I've brought in someone much more knowledgeable about it to help me. Andrew Mark Henry of Religion for Breakfast has thought a lot about this. So Andrew, what's the difference between magic and religion, and where does science fit into it all? Thanks Mark, those are some really tough questions, because as you said, religion and magic are very subjective terms. One person's religion is another person's scary, deviant magic. In fact, for the Romans, the Latin word magia had very pejorative connotations. It was used to describe any ritual that they didn't like, or that they thought was secretive, violent, or subversive. This long history of magic being considered a category of dark and scary rituals has influenced how modern scholars have tried to define magic in relation to religion today. So for example in the 1920s, the Archbishop Alexander Leroy describes magic as the perversion of science as well as of religion, and the archaeologist Alphonse Barb describes magic as a degenerate form of religion. Just like how food slowly rots away, magic is the rotten refuse of pure religion that's been corrupted by human frailty and selfishness. The thing is, these are not academic ways to define magic. It's only been in recent decades that scholars have tried to craft objective definitions of magic with varying degrees of success. So for example the archaeologist Andrew Wilburn has defined magic as mechanistic ritual that draws on religious practice, sometimes exoticized forms of religious practice, to try to serve personal ends, like healing a sickness, exercising a demon, or cursing a rival. As for science, magic is deeply intertwined with the history of science. In fact, I often joke that Isaac Newton is not the first great scientist but the last great magician because he wrote tons and tons of books on the occult, astrology, alchemy, stuff like that. And lots of the famous names from the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment were also super into the occult. And on some level this makes sense, right? If you're making a magic potion that has a lot of elements of scientific experimentation, expert knowledge, trying to gather ingredients together to try to affect nature. So it's here in the 21st century that we have starkly differentiated between science, magic, religion, but for many people in the past these three categories of knowledge were very blurry and overlapped each other. Thanks Andrew, that's helpful. But as you say, I guess there's no definitive way to distinguish between magic and religion and other forms of knowledge, especially in the ancient world. And that brings us back to the Magi. The word magush, or its Greek form magos, referred to a priest of the Zoroastrian religion. To this day, a certain type of Zoroastrian priest is called a mobad, which is a contraction of magupati, meaning something like priestmaster. The details are a little unclear, since most of the evidence we have of them is from the foreign perspective of Greek writers, but it seems the magush casts were priests in an older Iranian polytheistic tradition. But sometime around the 8th century BCE, they adopted the monotheistic Zoroastrian religion. It seems that with the unification of the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great, the specifically Median magush cast spread more generally throughout Iran. The later 5th century Greek physician and historian Ctesias, referred to Zarathustra, who was the founder of Zoroastrianism, and whose name became Zoroaster in Greek as a magus himself. Whatever the details might be, the magushes came to be associated with Zoroastrianism. It's important to keep in mind that Zoroastrianism wasn't a completely new religion, but a modification of older traditions. Scholars aren't certain when the prophet Zarathustra lived, but it's estimated to be in the 2nd millennium BCE or perhaps a little later around the 7th or 6th century BCE, closer to the time of Cyrus the Great. He was a religious reformer who promoted the idea of one god, Ahura Mazda, and the importance of human free will and personal ethics over ritual and sacrifice. Ahura Mazda's name, by the way, which means literally why spirit or lord, comes ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European roots Ansu, which produced the words Isir and Asgard, the names of the Old Norse gods and their abode respectively, men, to think, and day, to set or put. Over time, the other Old Iranian gods came to be demonized and were referred to as Daivas. Daiva is cognate with Sanskrit Deva, one of the terms for a deity in Hinduism, and goes back to the Proto-Indo-European root Yeu, meaning to shine, but also used to refer to a Skyfather god, Dieu or Dieu-Peter, which spread with the Indo-European languages, becoming Jupiter in Latin, Zeus in Greek, and Tyr or Q in the Germanic Pantheon, now reflected in the word Tuesday. It's also the root behind such words as divine, deity, and Latin deus god, as in deus ex machina, literally god from the machine, referring to an unlikely solution to an unsolvable problem to resolve a plot. And, as we've seen already, machina and English machine come from the same root as magic. The other important concept of Zoroastrianism to keep in mind are the principles of Asha and Gruge, meaning roughly truth and the lie, and the ongoing struggle between these forces, essentially a dualistic battle between good and evil. The word Asha or Arta comes ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root R, to fit together, which also gives us such words as order, harmony, rhyme, and right, as in a religious right. The word Gruge or Gruge comes ultimately from Proto-Indo-European Drogue, meaning to deceive, a concept we'll return to. Fittingly for this time of year, the root also leads to Old Norse Draugr, a kind of undead creature similar to a revenant or zombie, probably via the idea of a phantom. The word also gives us the English word dream, which makes sense if you think of dreams as deceptive. This brings us to the connection between dreams and magic, as one of the roles of the Magus or Magi seems to have been dream interpretation. Another word we have for dreams, at least bad dreams, is nightmare, which also has its origins in Old English. Actually, the compound word nightmare doesn't show up until the late 13th century, but is made up of the Old English words Nicht and Mara. But Old English Mara and the word nightmare itself didn't originally refer to a bad dream. The Old English Mara originally referred to a kind of female incubus who would sit upon people's chests while they slept, producing a feeling of suffocation. And that was the original meaning of the compound nightmare as well. By the 16th century, the word nightmare could also refer to the feeling of suffocation. And it wasn't until as late as the 19th century that nightmare could refer to any bad dream. Now Old English Mara can be traced back to the Proto-Indo European root Mayor, which meant to rub away harm, a sense we can still see in the derivative mortar, as in a mortar and pestle. That root also led to a number of words having to do with death, such as mortal and murder. Interestingly, it's also the source of the first element of morrigan, the Irish goddess associated with both war and fate, specifically with the foretelling of death or victory in battle, who may have been the source of the figure in Arthurian legend Morgan Le Fay, a magical enchantress. Now when we think about dreams and nightmares and supernatural beings who attack you in your sleep, we might also think of the character Freddy Kruger in the 1984 film A Nightmare on Elm Street, who attacks his teenage victims in their dreams. This film, along with the 1978 film Halloween with the newly released 2018 sequel, appropriate for this time of year, featuring Michael Myers, who also targets teenagers, are perhaps two of the best known examples of the genre of slasher films, a subgenre of horror films. Horror films, which drew their inspiration from gothic literature like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula, were kicked off by the early film pioneer Georges Méliès, who used a variety of visual effects techniques such as substitution splices, multiple exposures, and time lapse photography to achieve the supernatural events in his horror films, which he also used in his early science fiction films. Méliès, who had also been a stage magician, bringing us back to magic again, also developed the trick film genre, using those same film techniques, what we might call trick photography, to allow a magician in a film to be able to do the seemingly impossible. And so, magic tricks also brings us to the idea of deception that we saw with the roots of the words dream and rouge. The word trick comes into English from old French trick, deceit treachery cheating, and trehir cheat trick deceive, and is thus related to the word treachery. But the origin of the old French words is uncertain. They might come from Latin trecarii to trifle dali play tricks from the plural noun trecai, perplexity's wild tricks, which also gives us the word extricate, literally, to get out of perplexities. Alternatively, it might instead come into French from a Germanic source related to Dutch trick, drawing pole, which also has the sense trick cunning, and is traceable back to the Proto-Indo-European root drag, to draw drag on the ground. There's a related rhyming variant of this root, trog, to draw drag move, which comes into Latin as trahara, to pull draw, which comes into English in a number of different forms, such as traction, tractor, train, attract, contract, and treat. The sense development for treat goes like this. The Latin frequentative form of trahara is traktara, to manage, handle, deal with, discuss, which comes into old French as traitier, to deal with, act towards, set forth, in speech or writing. This comes into middle English with the sense negotiate, bargain, deal with, and we can see this sense in the related word treaty, and from this develop the later senses of to heal, cure, and to entertain with food or drink, and anything that gives pleasure. So if this tricky etymology is correct, Halloween trick or treating doesn't really offer a choice as it's etymologically redundant. Now getting back to magic tricks, which deceive the audience for the purposes of entertainment, the stage magician often achieves this through misdirection and sleight of hand, often using a magic wand to draw the gaze of the viewer. Now of course, beyond the worlds of stage magic and fiction, with Harry Potter's wand or Gandalf's staff, there are ancient traditions of wands used for magical purposes, probably based on the sceptres that were widespread symbols of rulership. For instance, in Homer's Odyssey, the witch Cersei uses a magic rod, called a rabdus in Greek, to transform Odysseus' men into swine. And in the biblical book of Exodus, when Moses and Aaron try to coerce Pharaoh into freeing the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, the first wonder is Aaron throwing down his rod, which is translated into Greek as rabdus in the Septuagint, and transforming it into a serpent. Another bit of stage magic that also has a real historical foundation is the crystal ball, now the cliche of the amusement park fortune teller. In the 16th century, John D., mathematician, astronomer and occult philosopher, who was an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, gazed into crystals in an attempt to see visions of angels. This is part of a larger category called scrying, in which the practitioner stares into a reflective, refractive, or luminescent surface, or object, such as water, a mirror, or fire, in order to gain some sort of prophecy or revelation. And in a sense, this is kind of similar and sometimes overlaps with dream interpretation, otherwise known as onyramancy. One famous example of this comes from the biblical book of Genesis, the famous Joseph, who had the coat of many colours. Joseph was given that coat because he was the favourite son of his father Jacob, who was also by the way prone to receiving dream visions, having earlier received the vision of a stairway to heaven. No, not that stairway to heaven, Jacob's ladder. Well, in addition to receiving that technicolor sign of his father's favouritism, Joseph also had two dreams which symbolically showed his brothers bowing down to him. So, his brothers were naturally jealous of him, and sold him into slavery, and convinced their father that he was killed by wild beasts. Through a series of adventures in Egypt, in which Joseph accurately interpreted the prophetic dreams of fellow prisoners, and later interpreting the dream of the Pharaoh predicting seven years of abundance, followed by seven years of famine, thus advising him to store up surplus grain, Joseph was made vizier of Egypt. Now, during that famine, many people came to Egypt to purchase grain, including Joseph's brothers. So, Joseph devised a trick for them, planting a silver cup in the sack of one of his brothers, and then pretending it was stolen. When Joseph's steward found the cup in the possession of the brothers, he said it belonged to his master, and was the cup Joseph used for divination, in other words, scrying. Well, in the end, Joseph was reunited with his brothers and father, but his prophetic dream had come true, his brothers did bow down to him as vizier. And this isn't the only ancient story of a cup being used for scrying. In Persian mythology is the cup of jamsheed, a magical cup that contained the elixir of immortality, and was also used for scrying. Many Persian literary texts describe this cup being used by jamsheed and other mythological kings, including in the Shahnameh, the great national epic of greater Iran, which tells the mythological and historical past of the Persian Empire, including the life of the prophet Zarathustra, which brings us back, once again, to Zoroastrianism and prophecy. The word prophecy comes from Greek pro, before, and fanai, to speak, and a particularly deceptive form that essentially tricks its recipient is the self-fulfilling prophecy. One of the most famous literary examples of this is in Shakespeare's Macbeth, in which Macbeth gets the prophecy from the witches that he will become king, and then goes on to make it happen by killing the king and usurping the throne. In Oedipus, the king, by the Greek playwright Sophocles, in order to avoid the prophecy that the baby Oedipus will grow up to kill his father, his parents leave the baby to die on a mountaintop. But he is rescued and given to surrogate parents, with the result that when Oedipus grows up and gets the prophecy that he'll kill his father and marry his mother, he leaves his supposed parents to avoid it, and ends up fulfilling both prophecies. Or, if you want a more recent example, to return to Harry Potter again, in reaction to the prophecy that a child born on a certain day will kill him, Voldemort tries to murder the infant Harry, thus making Harry the one who is eventually able to defeat Voldemort. Now, one of the reasons that self-fulfilling prophecies work is that they give the receiver the confidence to make those events happen, as in the case of Macbeth. The word confidence, by the way, comes from the Latin-intensive prefix calm, plus the word fedora, to trust, and lies behind the term confidence-trip, sometimes shortened simply to con, thus bringing us back to the theme of deception, which is well known in the gambling con in which the victim is allowed to win several times to build up his confidence before taking him for all he's worth. A famous historical example of a self-fulfilling prophecy involves Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Empire who I mentioned earlier. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Cyrus's grandfather Astiages had prophetic dreams which were interpreted by the Magi as meaning his grandson would usurp his throne. Fearing this, he ordered his general Harpagus to kill the baby, but he couldn't bring himself to do it, and pass the jaw-bond to a cowherd who also couldn't go through with it and brought the baby up as his own. Years later, when Cyrus had grown up and all of this was revealed, Astiages punished Harpagus by killing his son, but after the Magi backpedaled and said that they had misinterpreted the dream, Cyrus was spared. In revenge, Harpagus encouraged Cyrus to revolt against Astiages and take over, and he did just that. So, I guess the moral of the story is, watch out for those Magi dream interpretations. In returning to the Magi and the word Magus, its first attestation is in the Bihistan inscription by Darius the Great, the fourth king of the Achaemenid Empire, which is a bit of propaganda that tells of how he came to the throne. Basically, when Cyrus died, he was succeeded by his son Cambyses II. According to Herodotus, Cambyses had a dream in which he saw his younger brother Bardia sitting on the royal throne and had him secretly killed. Then, according to Darius, a Magus named Gaumata impersonated the dead Bardia and eventually came to the throne. Darius soon after usurped the throne from the imposter Gaumata. Of course, it's entirely possible that Darius made this up to legitimize his claim to the throne with Gaumata being an imposter, and he further legitimizes his claim by stating in the Bihistan inscription that he became king by grace of Ahura Mazda. Whatever the truth may be, we certainly see several more examples here of our recurring theme of deception, not to mention prophetic dreams. With these sorts of stories circulated by Greek authors, it's not too surprising that the Magi gained the reputation for not only being magicians, but also for being devious and deceptive. Furthermore, unlike Greek priests, the Magi would whisper their prayers and ritual texts in a low voice, and in the unfamiliar Avestan language of the Zoroastrian religious texts, which may have sounded to the Greeks like incantations. Interestingly, the native Greek word for magic, goatea, with goes meaning sorcerer, or literally one who howls out enchantments, comes from the Greek verb goon, to whale, groan, weep, from a Proto-Indo-European root that meant to call or cry. The Greeks had other words for particular types of magic, such as necromanthea, necromancy, or the communication with the dead for prophetic purposes, from necross, dead body, and mantea, divination oracle derived from my nest thigh to be inspired from men to think, one of the Proto-Indo-European roots that lies behind the name of Hurra Mazda. And the word pharmacaea, from which we get the word pharmacy, referred to the practice of using drugs, poisons, and medicines. But the word magaea soon became a more general term for magic in Greek. Nevertheless, the Greeks were often also quite skeptical about magic. Herodotus recounts the story of Darius's successor Xerxes, who when sailing his fleet to attack Greece was hindered by a storm, but the magae were able to quell the storm with their sacrifices and incantations, allowing them to proceed. Or, as Herodotus dryly wrote, perhaps it abated of its own accord. And in that self-fulfilling prophecy play Oedipus the King, Sophocles has Oedipus used the word magus as a term of abuse directed at the soothsayer Tiresias, when he gave him a prediction he didn't like. So the word also came to have the sense of a charlatan in Greek. The magae in the biblical nativity narrative probably originally implied the use of magic and astrology, since they predicted and located the Christ child from the stars. But in later Christian traditions, the magae are often rendered as the three kings, or the three wise men, reflecting later Christianity's discomfort with magic, which they held to be the work of the devil. In any case, the Greek words magus and magaea were subsequently borrowed into Latin as magus and magia, initially with the specific reference of Persian practices, as for instance by the Roman orator Cicero, but soon in the more general sense, as for instance by the poet Virgil. Interestingly, Virgil came to have a rather magical reputation himself, a practice arose of using Virgil's writings for a form of Bibliomancy, that is divination using books, called specifically Sortes Virgilianae, or Virgilian lots. Basically the way it works is you take a text and randomly pick a passage from it, by for instance balancing a book on its spine and letting it fall open to a random page. And that passage would give you your prediction or answer to your question. Virgil wasn't the first author to be used this way, the Greek poet Homer is the source for the Sortes Homerachi, with the philosopher Plato reporting a similar form of this being used by his former teacher Socrates, to predict his day of execution, but the practice continued into the Roman era. Later on, Christians would use the Bible for the Sortes Sanctorum, but the Sortes Virgilianae was the most popular technique, with one early example being Hadrian's use of it to judge the Emperor Trajan's attitude toward him, when it correctly predicted that he would be adopted by the Emperor as his heir. The practice continued through the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, and correctly predicted the death of King Charles I, when the Viscount Falkland suggested the King try this as a lighthearted pastime, when they came across a finely printed and bound edition of Virgil. To mitigate the damage, the Viscount tried it himself, hoping to hit upon some irrelevant passage and discredit the King's prediction, only to correctly predict his own death. I guess with divination you should be careful what you ask. The really surprising thing here, though, is that in the Middle Ages, Virgil came to be thought of as a magician himself, and numerous stories and legends that had nothing to do with the poet's own biography, spraying up about Virgil being an astrologer able to predict the future, and a wizard able to perform great feats of magic. Some of the things that sparked this belief were the mystic element in Book 6 of the Aeneid, and the prophetic nature of his fourth eclog, which Christians took as prophesying the coming of Christ. Even his name was seen as being a clue, since the name Virgil is similar to the Latin word virga, wand, and he was said to have a maternal grandfather named Magus. Well, his mother did indeed come from a Roman family with the name Magia, though it's not related to the word Magus. In medieval Wales, this reputation was so strong that the Welsh-ified version of his name became a generic term for a magician, which today is the modern Welsh word for a pharmacist. Now that Latin word sortes, or sores in the singular form, comes from the Proto-Indo-European root ser to line up. In Latin, the word was originally used to refer to little pieces of wood used to draw lots, but later came to refer to what is allotted by fate, and thus fortune, and then to any kind of fortune-telling. From that, it later developed the sense rank, class, or order, and it's that sense that we see in the English word sort. The word sortition refers to the drawing of lots, like a lottery, and the word lottery is related to the word lot, coming from a Germanic root, and thus bringing us back to the theme of gambling, which we last saw in the gambling con. The other way this root makes it into English are the words sorcery and sorcerer, from old French sorcery and sorcery, originally one who predicts or influences fate or fortune, but broadening to mean one who uses magic. The more precise word now for fortune-telling by drawing lots is claromancy, another of those mancy terms like necromancy, bibliomancy, and oniromancy. The first element of claromancy is the Greek claros, lot, allotment, from the Proto-Indo-European root kel to strike or cut, from the idea of that which is cut off. Also from Greek claros is Greek clerikos, Latin clericus, and English cleric, clerk, and clergy. So how do we get to hear from there? Well, from the sense allotment, cleros also came to mean inheritance, which is how it's used in the Greek translation of the biblical book Leviticus in reference to assistance to the temple priests. Therefore shall they have no inheritance among their brethren, the Lord is their inheritance. So the word came to refer to matters having to do with priests, and eventually priest and the priesthood itself. In the Middle Ages, clerks, sometimes now pronounced clerks, were the only well-educated people available, and so in addition to their religious duties also used their skills as accountants, and from that we get the modern sense of clerk, which is brought in further to include clerical bureaucratic duties, and even store clerks. The word cleric was re-borrowed into English to replace clerk, which had thus become ambiguous. But clergy brings us back to the theme of priests, like the original role of those magi, though the clergy probably don't engage in claromancy in spite of the etymology. Probably. So far we've talked about priests and other male magicians, but what about witches? The word witch obviously carries a lot of baggage with it. For one thing it's a gendered word referring specifically to women, and beyond its mean magical sense, witch or old witch can be used as a contemptuous term for a disliked woman, though it should be noted that in more recent times there has been an attempt to reclaim the word witch in a more positive context, as for instance is sometimes done by the Neo-Pagan world of Wicca and in the Harry Potter world. Hermione is indeed the most gifted witch of her generation. Witches in the Middle Ages and early modern periods were suspected of many things, including preventing conception in women and attacking male fertility, sometimes actually stealing men's penises, storing them in large chests or in bird's nests in trees. Historically, many women have been persecuted for the supposed crime of witchcraft, justified in part by the 15th century Christian treatise Malleus Maleficarum, the witch's hammer, and you can tell it specifically women targeted here because of the feminine Latin ending Arum. It's hard to know how many women were persecuted, tortured, and burned during the witch hunts of the 15th to 18th centuries, but some estimates place it at 60,000 to 200,000 to even as high as several million, and it's perhaps little surprise that the word wicked is derived from the same old English root that produced the word witch. I guess you could say that wicked witch is etymologically redundant. Witch comes from the old English word witcha, meaning witch, which has the masculine form wicca, meaning male witch or wizard, from which we get the modern word wicca in reference to Neo-Paganism. It should be pointed out that there is no historical line of connection for this word from old English to the present, with the word having been reintroduced into modern English in the early 20th century. The further etymology of the word witch is very disputed, with many suggestions being made. The brothers Grim, who I suppose would know a thing or two about witch stories, propose that old English witcha and wicca come from the proto-Indo-European root wake to separate or divide, reflecting the practice of claromancy, which according to the Roman ethnographer Cassidus, was part of early Germanic religious practice. But Indo-Europeanist Calvert Watkins propose that it comes from the root wegg, meaning to be strong or lively in the sense of to wake or rouse, reflecting the practice of necromancy, in other words, one who wakes the dead. If true, witch would be cognate with wake, watch, and weight, as well as vegetable, which is probably not the sort of thing you give out to trick-or-treaters dressed up as witches. And though there are numerous other suggested etymologies, I'll give you just one more, that it might be traced back to a homophonous root wake, which in this case means consecrated or holy, and has a number of other derivatives connected to religion and magic. For instance, German Weihnachten, literally Holy Night, used specifically in reference to Christmas. But we better leave Christmas aside because this is Halloween. And Latin Wictima, an English victim, in reference to animals used in religious sacrifices. But most interestingly for our purposes, the words guile and while, both referring to deceit or trickery, which would then be akin to old English Uigla, divination sorcery, but which also bring us back to our ongoing theme of deception. But there are a lot more terms for male magic practitioners. In the Harry Potter world, that would be wizard. But wizard has more of a positive connotation, so for a better parallel to witch, let's turn to the word warlock. Interestingly, the word didn't originally have any connection to magic. In old English, the word warloga meant traitor, liar, oathbreaker, reminding us again of the theme of deception. And by extension, it was sometimes used to refer to the devil. It's only later in the 16th century in Scots that the word came to be used as the male equivalent of a witch. Etymologically, it breaks down into two elements, the second of which is leogun, to lie, which also gives us the word lie. The first element is war, faith, fidelity, agreement, from the proto-Indo-European root wereo, true, trustworthy, which also leads to the Latin word wearitas, sometimes thought of by the Romans as the personification of truth and related to such English words as verify and veracity. So, literally, a warlock is a truth liar. Now this brings us back to the concept of truth, the opposite of lies and deceptions, opposing ideas which you'll remember as the opposing forces in Zoroastrian, Asha, and Gruge. There are a number of words in English that mean truth, including the now somewhat archaic word soothe. The old English form soothe was actually quite common and comes from the proto-Indo-European root s that supplies several of the forms of the irregular verb to be, such as is and am, as well as words such as yes, essence, and sin. Though the word soothe today is somewhat obscure, the compound soothe sire, meaning a fortune teller or prophet, is rather more well known, being used, for instance, to describe Tiresias in the Edipus story along with sire, literally one who sees. The word truth itself has a fascinating etymology. It goes back to the proto-Indo-European root dero to be firm, solid, steadfast, which also has the specialized senses of tree and wood, especially oak, including the word tree itself. It's also the second element in the word ausa true, a term used to refer to a neo-pagan group focused on the Old Norse mythological tradition, which means literally faith or allegiance to the aesir, the pantheon of Norse gods, and we've already seen that first element as the root lying behind the name of the Zoroastrian god Hurra Mazda. The Norse, by the way, also had their own tradition of magic, called Sather, associated with the gods Odin and Freya. The word Sather comes from the proto-Indo-European root sigh, meaning to bind or tie, which also has the derivatives sinew and secular, which originally as Latin cyclum meant age span of time, and came to mean worldly not religious. Other derivatives of deru, solid tree, are dryad, a tree nymph in Greek mythology, and druid, the high-ranking priestly class who also wielded considerable secular power among the Celtic peoples. So the druids are another example of a priestly class, like the magi and the clergy, who are also mistrusted by external cultures. In this case, the Romans during the Roman-Britain period. The second element of the word druid comes from the proto-Indo-European wade to sea, which has such other derivatives as vision, view, and evident, as well as wise, wisdom, and wit. So a druid is someone who is wise about trees, and from the word wise, we also get in the Middle English period, the word wizard, literally a wise man, but it soon gained the more specific sense of a magician. Also from this root, we get the old English term, Whitenayamot, referring to the Council of Advisors to the king in Anglo-Saxon England, who technically were in charge of electing the kings. Though this political body didn't survive past the Norman conquest of England, it seems to have been the inspiration behind J.K. Rowling's wizard gamut, the wizard court of law in the Harry Potter world, obviously also playing off the word wizard. But as we've seen, the word wizard comes from the same root anyway, and in any case, the wizards we know today, such as Albus Dumbledore and Gandalf, are also quite wise, and indeed witty. And all this talk about wizards and magic brings us to our conclusion, tying many of these elements together, specifically to the deck-building game Magic the Gathering, published by the games company Wizards of the Coast, who by the way are also the current publishers of Dungeons and Dragons, after they bought out its original company TSR. In various versions of D&D, different levels of magicians or magic users, as they were called in the game, were known by specific words, many of which we've covered in this video, such as seer, magician, enchanter, warlocker witch, sorcerer, necromancer, and wizard. The game Magic the Gathering, which also has magic users known as mages by the way, was developed by Richard Garfield, who had been a combinatorial mathematics doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, and apparently he created it so that he and his friends would have something to do while they waited for everyone to turn up for their D&D games. Garfield has two other claims to fame. His great-great-grandfather was James A. Garfield, a rather minor US president having been assassinated within his first year in office, and his grand-uncle Samuel B. Faye invented the paperclip. Unless you ask the Norwegians, who have their own candidate for this honour, Johann Waller, whose version of the paperclip was adopted as a symbol of resistance against the Nazis, after pins or badges bearing national symbols were banned. As for Magic the Gathering itself, it originally had an aspect of gambling since according to the original rules one was supposed to ante up a card in order to play, which the winner would then be able to claim at the end of the game, and even now the packs come with random assortments of rare cards, which can be quite valuable. So whether it's card tricks or tarot cards, or the three-card Monte-Con or Magic the Gathering, or all the way back to exotic Zoroastrian priests and self-fulfilling prophecies, falsely accused witches and crystal ball-gazing wizards, it seems perhaps that for Magic, luck, deception, and shifting perceptions have always been on the cards. Thanks for watching! My special thanks to my friend and fellow YouTuber Andrew of Religion for Breakfast who suggested this topic and helped me out with the crucial definition of magic. Why not check out his video What is the History of Magic Wands for more on that topic? 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